


Patch a Wounded Soul

by dedicatedfollower467



Series: Better Half verse [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Disability, Gen, Past Brainwashing, Prosthesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:52:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1722176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedicatedfollower467/pseuds/dedicatedfollower467
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He and his daemon don't fit together right anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patch a Wounded Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the quote "You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid."

The dog daemon hops up onto the bed where he is sitting, her metal claw rasping quietly at the couch. She looks up at him. “Hey, um,” she says. There is a pregnant pause. “Um. You.”

They still don’t know what to call each other. Neither of them is comfortable with the names Bucky or Frankie, though there’s something in them both which responds to those names. But they are no longer the Assets, the Winter Soldier and the Daemon, either. The old titles don’t fit. So far they have managed on vague descriptions and second-person pronouns, but they are only another reminder that they don’t really have names.

“Yes, my friend?” he says, glancing down at her.

“Can you take this leg off?” she says, shaking her metal claw.

He frowns at her. “Why?”

She flicks a stubby ear and her tail slips between her legs. “I don’t want the reminder of what they did to us. And I don’t need it like you need your arm. I’ve got three other legs that work just fine. But, I mean, if you think I should keep it…”

He doesn’t like it when she looks upset like that – scared of him, as though afraid that he’ll hurt her if he disapproves. He knows that they did that to her a lot back when they were with Hydra, but she’s his daemon. He thought she would trust him not to hurt her.

He reaches out to pat her on the head, show her he approves, and she flinches backwards as his hand falls. He freezes in mid-air, realizing at the last second that it had been the metal arm he moved with.

It looks like they still have a long way to go.

She seems to realize what happened as well, for she stretches her head up to bump against the curve of his hand. He doesn’t feel it in the sense that he feels things in his other hand, but the pressure-sensitive metal of the prosthetic lets him know that there’s a gentle, but firm, contact there. He cups the back of her head and the lets his hand trail down her spine in a slow caress.

Jarring moments like this, where there’s a clear disconnect between intent and perception, shake them both. They don’t have the rapport a normal human-daemon pair is supposed to have. They don’t anticipate each other’s thoughts, practically read each other’s minds, in anything except battle. They have to navigate each other as gingerly as they would approach a shell-shocked stranger.

Still, the tingle of connection he feels whenever he touches her, even if it’s just the casual brush of her shoulder against his calf as they walk together or the way her back is warm against his thigh when they sit on the couch, feels so good. They’ve been starved of each other’s touch for so long, sometimes it’s hard to stop touching. And sometimes just holding each other will help them to remember.

“So,” his daemon says after a moment of petting. “Would you? Take the leg off, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he says, leaning over her. She stills, and he knows it’s just the instinctive reaction, training grilled deep into her when a larger opponent gets above her, but he can’t help feeling slightly guilty for making her afraid.

She thumps her tail once, twice, to let him know that it’s okay, and he flashes the quickest smile he can give. It still feels weird to smile, and he knows she feels weird wagging her tail, but it’s still the best way for them to communicate.

Neither of them ever knew much about how their respective prosthetics worked, but he’s watched them take her claw off enough times to remember the sequence. There’s a button to release, and then it screws, and then the whole thing slides off with a few mechanical clicks.

The stump of her leg still has a metal cap connected to it – maybe eventually they’ll find someone who can take that part of it out of her, but he knows that to try ripping it out would only cause them more pain. Neither of them are strangers to agony, but why invite it?

She sits up awkwardly and jumps down off of the couch, unsteady on her three legs. But he can tell that she’ll get used to it eventually, and when she looks up at him and wags her tail, he smiles back.

They’re broken and they don’t fit together the way they’re supposed to, but maybe they can work through this.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, yes, this is officially a series now. Expect to see lots of completely unrelated short fics about the extended Avengers and Agents of SHIELD family and their daemons.
> 
> Sorry to anybody waiting on my other fics.


End file.
